In recent years, many states have enacted legislation which requires that beverage containers carry a redemption deposit as a technique for encouraging recycling and discouraging littering, at least of such redeemable containers. In other states, there have been extensive efforts to encourage voluntary recycling of beverage containers, even in the absence of required redemption deposits. As such, there has developed a need for efficient systems whereby beverage containers such as aluminum cans, plastic bottles, and glass bottles may efficiently be processed upon their return.
Retail outlets, which often must act as redemption centers, have had to utilize personnel to sort and count returned containers so that such containers could be returned to the proper distributor for redemption. This arrangement has required devotion of an inordinate amount of personnel time, and an inordinate proportion of the available floor space. Recycling thus has proven unacceptably expensive to most retail outlets and dedicated redemption centers. Accordingly, redeemers of beverage containers have sought a machine capable of automatically accepting redeemable containers and refunding the redeemer in the form of a monetary deposit refund, or a coupon for redemption at a retail store. Container redeemers also have sought a machine capable of receiving containers in bulk so as to simplify loading of containers into the machine. Additionally, container redeemers have sought a machine capable of recording a number of returned containers of each acceptable type such that a redemption refund may be charged against the proper distributor without hand-sorting and recording of returned bottles and cans. Further, a machine capable of efficiently reducing the volume of accepted containers has been sought in order to address deficiencies in available storage space. To this end, there has been a flurry of activity in the development of conveniently used reverse vending machines, and of techniques for the intake, or reverse vending, of recyclable bottles and cans.
One particularly useful reverse vending machine is illustrated and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,653,627, which issued on Mar. 31, 1987 to Hampson et al. That patent discloses a bulk feed reverse vending machine which provides for the separation counting and crushing of beverage containers such as cans. The invention was improved upon by a machine including a rotary-bristle drive scanning station which aids in accurately identifying containers which are redeemed. That machine is set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 5,273,149, which issued on Dec. 28, 1993 to Aldrich et al. Both of these inventions are commonly owned with the present invention and are incorporated herein by this reference.
Although the aforementioned reverse vending machines have proven extremely effective in the redemption of cans, and particularly in the redemption of standard-size cans, such machines have not addressed the more diverse redemption needs of most redemption centers. For example, known reverse vending machines have provided for pre-loading of the machine with containers, but have not accommodated subsequent in-feed of containers while the pre-loaded containers are processed. Known reverse vending machines also may use complicated and/or ineffective container advancement mechanisms, may be characterized by inaccurate container identification, and may employ unnecessarily complex or ineffective container off-load mechanisms.